The year 2018 will see a sharp increase in demand for professionals with skills in emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, even as people with capabilities in Big Data and Analytics will continue to be the most sought after by companies across sectors, say sources in the recruitment industry.
The Indian IT industry is expected to add around 1.80 lakh to 2 lakh new jobs in 2018. With a strong focus on Digital India, the industry requires 50 per cent more workforce. AI alone will create 2.3 million jobs globally by 2020, said Alka Dhingra, General Manager, IT staffing, TeamLease Services, a recruitment company.
The domestic IT job market is in a revival mode. Job seekers and techies with right skills will be in a ‘great’ position to capitalise on this trend, said Ravi Kaklasaria, CEO & Co-Founder, SpringPeople, a corporate training and certification provider.
One in five companies will use AI to make decisions in 2018. It will help companies offer customised solutions and instructions to employees in real-time.
Old generation text analytics platforms were complex. Few companies were successful in analysing text data. With deep learning in AI, it will be possible to successfully analyse both structured and unstructured text data, he said.
“We expect a 60 per cent increase in demand for AI and machine learning specialists in 2018,” said BN Thammaiah, Managing Director, Kelly Services India. The increase in the demand for AI and ML specialists will be from 20,000 to 32,000 in 2018 even as the IT sector will continue to hire for newer skills, he said.
An AI professional with 2-4 years experience will earn annually ₹15-20 lakh, while for 4-8 years it would be ₹20-50 lakh, he said.
New age streamsA Kamal Karanth, Co-founder, Xpheno, a recruitment company, said in sectors such as IT, FinTech and e-commerce there would be a scramble for AI engineers to prepare for the next 3-5 years. N Shivakumar, Business Head, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, TeamLease, said auto companies are relying on AI, analytics, business intelligence and Cloud for industrial automation.
The emergence of new age digital disciplines such as BlockChain will start to penetrate the e-com industry in 2018. Data scientists will also be in good demand as they would be able to gather, process, synthesise and analyse both volumes of structured and unstructured data.
Currently, India has over 50,000 open data analytics jobs on the market and this is expected to grow to 100,000 in 2018, said Kaklasaria.